Address

Portrait

Document Actions

IM2 (www.im2.ch)
is one the 20 Swiss National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCR) aiming at
boosting research and development in several areas considered of strategic
importance to the Swiss economy. The National Centers of Competence in Research
are a research instrument managed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) on
behalf of the Federal Authorities. Granted for a maximum duration of 12 years,
they are evaluated every year by a review panel, and renewed every four years. In December 2009, the SNSF approved the next and last four-year period (2010 - 2013) which has started January 1st, 2010. Success of the NCCRs is measured in
terms of research achievements, training of young scientists (PhD students and
postdocs), knowledge and technology transfer (including spin-offs), and
advancement of women.

Started in 2002, IM2 is aimed at the
advancement of research, and the development of prototypes, in the field of multimodal
information management and man-machine interaction. IM2 is particularly concerned
with technologies coordinating natural input modes (such as speech, image, pen,
touch, hand gestures, head and/or body movements, and even physiological signals) with multimedia system outputs, such as speech, sounds, images,
animations, whether standalone or combined in web-based browsing interfaces.

To foster collaboration and maximize synergy
between the IM2 partners, it was decided to focus on a few, well defined,
applications. The most important and challenging of them is Smart Meeting Management.
The overall objective of this application is the construction of a
demonstration system to enable structuring, browsing and querying of an archive
of automatically analysed meetings. The archived meetings take place in a room
equipped with multimodal sensors. For each meeting, audio, video and textual information
is available, as well as information from other modalities. Audio information
comes from close talking and distant microphones, as well as binaural
recordings. Video information comes from multiple cameras and overhead
projectors. Writing devices capture whiteboard or participant’s notes. The
video and audio information form several streams of data generated during the
meeting, while the additional information — the agenda, discussion papers — and
can be used to guide the automatic structuring of the meeting. Multimodal interfaces
called ‘meeting browsers’ are then used for searching and browsing the
multimedia/multimodal meeting archive.